April
2, 2004
Dave,
I get the impression that by adding to your mail pile I’m
keeping you from something, so I’ll try to keep this as short as possible .
The Thread of
Intention
“There are so many
actors upon our lives, from God to nature (sometimes lupus is just lupus, after
all) to ourselves, that discerning just what— exactly— is the principal (though
I would say God is always the principal) is like predicting the weather.”
This is very much the meat
of the issue, and certainly relative to Islam. But the statement “lupus is just
lupus, after all,” I don’t think, necessarily implies that this is operating
contrary to God’s Will. God made viruses, as an example, to do their little
virus-thing, gave them their aspect and their purpose, and set them to work. On
one hand, you can contract a virus because it is just your bad luck; the virus
was doing an extra good job that day. You can also contract a virus through
something that you did, either literally or spiritually. God can also, for
whatever reason, give you the virus for His own purpose. There is also the
possibility that you got a virus through bad luck or by something you did and
then God makes use of it after the fact. Like I said, there are too many
variables here, really, to be able to come to a concrete conclusion, and yet
none of them are operating outside of God’s Will. That is why I said that I
believe God is always the principal. Nature (and this includes our own bodies)
is a sphere in and of itself and is already Islamized, already submitted to
God’s Will because it has no contrary will of its own. The distinction is that
it acts contrary to our will, not
God’s, and is the one of the very things we must either remove ourselves from
(through our own submission to God) or try and turn to our own will (which, as
a rule, doesn’t work all that well.)
By bringing up
our intention, I was illustrating a path of self-awareness, a thread in our
behavior. Like T.S. Eliot said, “Between the desire and the spasm\… Falls the
Shadow,” between the Impulse (or Inspiration, depending on the case) and the
Action, there is a process that is hard to see unless one is self-aware, and
part of that process is what we intend (both generally—what are our basic but
particular natures which govern our more specific intentions—and particularly)
to do with that Impulse or Inspiration. Without that part of the process under
consideration, it is impossible to determine what else acts both upon us and
that process itself. I am quite sure there were members of the Taliban that had
nothing but good intentions for the public at large, and yet, unaware, they
allowed those intentions to turn into terrible actions and terrible
consequences. They were not aware enough. You have to follow that thread of
intention from the beginning to the end, you have to measure this intention
against what you find yourself doing, if you are a) to understand the processes
that guide any action and the actors internal and external upon those actions,
and b) to vouchsafe that those actions remain true to your intention. Can we be
entirely self-aware, of everything? Probably not, but the more aware you
become, the more it begins to illuminate even more those things that remain
hidden in our natures. It is a constant process, but it is only by being aware,
and that awareness ever growing, that we can perceive the things we must purify
ourselves of. Without that awareness, purification is impossible; we are left
striking out at shadows in the darkness.
However, relative to our understanding of anyone else—which is
why I brought it up concerning Flannery O’Connor— is that we cannot be that
aware of other people in the same manner, with the same depth. But that is
still, really, all we have left to work with. The thread of their intention is
still all we can apperceive, because so much of the origin of their actions are
hidden to us. It is a matter of seeing through the glass darkly, but the thread
of intention is at least a weak light with which we can see through the glass,
to gauge what might have fueled their actions. Very much of what happened to
O’Connor is unknowable. I think she was very much aware of what was happening
on one level, not exactly aware on others. Because she did not have full
awareness (and who really can, absolutely) we cannot know fully what was going
on, even if she was inclined to clue us in on it, which she did not seem to be
willing to do; she was a very private person even in her private life.
Ultimately, we have to use the only tools available to us, if we are to make a
proof of any supposition.
(By the way, I have, twice now, mentioned her short story “Good
Country People” as the one in which she mirrors her own condition. I was wrong
(and how I got that one into my head, I’ll never know.) It was “The Enduring Chill”
that I meant, about a man who goes off to New York to become a writer— even
though he wasn’t capable of writing, and came to that sorry conclusion— only to
find himself become ill with some mysterious ailment that is killing him and
has to go back to the little town in the South where he grew up, to live with
his mother, whom he despises. The only thing he ever wrote and completed was a
letter that he was going to have his mother read after he was dead, indicting
her in every bad thing that ever happened to him, to render in her “an enduring
chill.” The last time he had been back, he had been writing a play about the
plight of black people in the South and so, to get to know them, he goes to
work at his mother’s dairy, trying to create a solidarity between himself with
the two shiftless black men who work there. He even drinks some of the milk
straight from the cow—something his mother adamantly does not allow them to do—
wanting them to join in, to get them to understand that they are as good as his
mother, though they decline. As his strength fails, he finds himself
remembering all of this while in his childhood bed, looking at the ceiling
where there has always been a strange water stain like a bird diving. And yet
through all of this he is sure he is going to die, which is what he wants, to
give up on everything because he was never good at anything. His mother, on the
other hand, keeps allowing this country doctor to come in and do blood work on
him. “Do you think for one minute I intend to sit here and let you die?” is
what she tells him. In the end it gets so bad he ends up delirious and weak,
cold down to the bones of him, sure he is dying, when his mother and the
country doctor come in. The doctor has found out what the trouble is: he has
undulant fever (the human form of the bangs) that he got from drinking
unpastuerized milk. He isn’t going to die. He will live on a long time, just
like he is, with this enduring chill. They leave him there in his room, him
staring at the ceiling as this all sinks in. At which point, Miss O’Connor,
ever turning the screw, informs us “The
fierce bird [the stain on the ceiling] which
through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised
over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion… he
would live his days in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last
impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead
of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.”
Yes, Flannery O’Connor was
Jonathan Edwards’ sarcastic
daughter.)
Gnostics
Even though I qualified just
how much one can know of God, regarding gnosis,
I still believe that it is the only way to gain any real knowledge of Him. That
is the very basis of my faith. I am not a Gnostic, but the very foundation of
my devotion is, by definition, gnostic. I think that gnosis is misunderstood and misapplied. Just the word “knowledge”
itself seems to come with more baggage than is necessary, as if the knowledge
of God must by defintion involve the Law. That is what He has prophets for. Gnosis, as I understand it, is a matter
of allowing His presence into you, of submitting absolutely to Him. The closer
I am to God the less I know, the less
there is of me to know anything. I
literally forsake everything for His presence, even myself. I am becoming
burned away in Him. And just how much that process has changed me is, I think,
pretty profound. But it is awfully hard to do. It is awfully hard to maintain.
I certainly don’t recommend it to anyone.
And yes, gnosticism is dangerous. If you have not purified
yourself and do not continue to do so, it will turn on you. Those who approach
it out of hubris or a desire for power generally find themselves on the sharp
end of the stick. In fact, every time I hear Alan Moore talking about his
search for God, on drugs, I am
appalled at what a reckless and astoundingly stupid thing that is to do. And
for what? Curiosity? Presumption? Out of boredom? So far, I think he’s lucky he
finds himself doing no more than worshiping a snake, or snake puppet (I assume
you know the history of Glycon, the patron saint of bad taxidemery used in
temple of the charlatan prophet Alexander of Abonuteichos.) I think God has an
enormous sense of humor, as I think Alan does. The fact that the deity he
worships is—by his own admission—a false god, more to the point, a puppet, and this does not smack of
Divine mockery to him simply boggles my mind. Maybe when you are doing your
cable access show (which is the first I have heard of this. I’m sure that won’t
ruffle any feathers or anything) you
can, instead of just reading Scripture, act out the God and Yoohoo god parts
with sock puppets. Think Alan might get the hint? Nah. Me neither…
But, to me,
this path is a selfless act, because one cannot engage in it properly but
sincerely. I do not practice this nor make my choices out of a fear of hell or
promise of heaven; I don’t give that part of the deal much thought at all. Even
if, at the end of the day, I find out that there is nothing after this life, I
will have no regrets in how I spent it and Whom I did it for. Speaking as
someone who is going to get a short shift in this world, who has had his
mortality driven painfully home to him, I think this says a great deal. In
fact, I think it makes any further argument I might make pointless.
__________
Yikes. This damn letter is
already 4 pages long. How did that happen? And here I am just itching to rank
on Madalyn Murray O’Hair— God’s little jester: “Dance Monkey, dance!”— who
ended up dismembered and left out in the wilderness over the gold coins she had
bought with the money she bilked from her Fellow Travelers. Better she had been
struck by lightning in her yard. Oh well. Sometimes it is awfully hard to pass
up the easy targets.
I guess I’ll shut it down now. I did want to quickly point out
that, really, the feminists and their inability to keep their mouths shut are
doing you, I think, more of a favor than you think. Look at how they took a
small film like The Passion, (Mel
Gibson figured he would be eating his investment, to say the least) and simply
because they and their humanist cohorts can’t keep from voicing their scorn,
turned it into a monster event, and— at least in this country, anyway— suddenly
woke the conservatives and Christians into realizing that keeping quiet and
hoping the harpies and homosexuals would shut up and go away was not working. I
think they will keep Cerebus around
longer than you think. I noticed that, in an article in People magazine (don’t ask how I found myself reading a People magazine) touting Norman Mailer’s
bride’s new book, they treated him like a charming old fossil. Emasculated by
faint praise. In fact, if they could get you to shut up, I imagine they would
turn you into the Harvey Pekar Mach II. Don’t be worried about the screaming
and carrying on. Be worried when it stops.
God bless,
D.B.
Little
P.S.
Sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this, but the thing with Madalyn Murray
O’Hair just makes me want to send this even more. Once again, from Jesus in the Eyes of the Sufis:
There was once a man who fell in with
Jesus on his travels. Going on together for a time, they reached a stream, where they sat down to have a bite of
breakfast. They had three loaves between them, giving them one apiece, which
they consumed, and one left over. Jesus rose and went over to the stream to
drink. When he returned he found the remaining loaf gone. Asking who had taken
it, he was told: “I do not know.”
So
they went on, until they spied a doe with two fawns. Jesus called for one of
the fawns and it came, offering itself to be slain. Jesus roasted the
slaughtered beast and presented it for the two of them to eat. After they
partaken of it, Jesus called out to the consumed fawn, “In the Name of the Lord,
arise!” And it rose up, whole, and walked away. Then Jesus turned to the other
man and cried: “In the Name of the Lord who has shown you this sign, I ask you
who has taken that loaf?” Again the man replied, “I do not know.”
They
walked on, until they came to a river. Jesus took the man’s hand and they both
set out walking on the water across the river. When they reached the other
side, again Jesus asked “In the Name of the Lord who has shown you this sign, I
ask you who has taken that loaf?” Again the man replied, “I do not know.”
Proceeding
on, they arrived at a desert. Jesus scooped up a handful of earth and cried:
“By God’s command become gold!” And it turned to gold, which Jesus divided into
three parts, saying this third is mine, this one yours and the remainder for
the one who took the loaf. Straightaway, the man spoke up, telling him, “I took
it!” Thereupon Jesus gave him the whole lot and left him.
As
the man proceeded through the wilderness, he met two men, who, on discovering
the gold with him, sought to kill him for it, but he pleaded for them to share
it three ways, thereupon they agreed,
sending one of their number on to a nearby village to bring food. The one going
set to thinking along the way, “Why should I share the gold with the others? I
shall simply poison this food and kill them off.” And so he put poison in the
food.
In
the meantime, the other two were thinking, “Why should we give up a third to
him, when we can keep it for ourselves?” So they agreed to kill him, when he
returned. Once they had done that, they
ate the poisoned food and promptly died themselves, leaving the gold abandoned
in the desert.
Jesus
came by and saw what had taken place. He turned to those who were with them and
said: “This is the way of the world. Beware!”
—Abu Hâmed Ghazâli, Ehya al-‘olum adin
(I
still can’t get over, in this story, how Jesus can’t get shed of the gold quick
enough, even though he made it or caused it to be made.)
